Gulls In A Barrel

I gave a reading today, as part of a group of poets reading from the anthology of Dublin poems, If Ever You Go, published by Dedalus, in which I have a few poems. The reading was in the tourist office on Suffolk Street, the converted St. Andrew's Church, which closed for services in 1993. I've hardly ever been inside before and initially I turned back because the layout (of queues and booths) made me think it was a post office. It's a nice venue, airy and bright, the evening sun pressing on the stained glass windows. The reading was in the loft and as I walked upstairs I noticed a life-sized wax model of Batman. Who knows? Best not to ask.

Tony Curtis was reading and also played guitar, accompanying ex-Dubliner John Shehan, whom I met last year in Listowel: a lovely session of songs and p'wems. I hadn't realised that Pat Boran would be recording the reading and I fluffed a couple of lines in two of my poems. But Pat assured me he'd take the 'digital scissors' to the recording, so that's probably okay. I was pleased to be able to recite Kavanagh's 'Lines Written On A Seat On The Grand Canal' by heart.

Afterwards, I moseyed, first into that human storm drain, Temple Bar, already full to bursting with the green people, then across the Halfpenny Bridge, where I wandered along the broadwalk in the broad evening sun and saw this girl feeding the gulls (she'd brought a whole sliced loaf). The light was gorgeous, it was a fairly obvious fish-in-a-barrel photo-op and I wasn't the only photographer to perch there for awhile. Dublin gulls always remind me of Bloom's flinging the religious 'throwaway' at the gulls on Sackville/O'Connell Bridge ('Elijah Is Coming approaching the water at thirtytwo feet per second'), thinking that the gulls are 'not such damn fools' as to mistake the scrunched up paper for food, spiritual or otherwise.

Then into Henry Street to try to net some interesting shadows, without much success. But lovely to let the crowd's feathery, long-legged light come stepping into the eye, the mind.